The team has a clear vision of what they are doing and where they fit into the bigger picture

The team delivers a regular flow of value via a well-defined backlog of work

This gives us an effective delivery engine (the team) with a clear destination in mind (the vision) and a clear route to get there (the backlog). All good? Not quite. If nothing was ever going to change, this would be all we need, but we know this isn't the case. When doing development work, and no matter what it is we are developing, we generally aren't travelling on well marked highways. Most development is, at best, navigating though a confusing maze of back streets and at worst, blazing our own trail through virgin country of varying degrees of ruggedness.

In any sort of development work, change is inevitable and we need to equip our team to deal with it. That's where the next principle comes in -

There is a content authority responsible for making sure decisions are made quickly

Last post I put forward 7 principles that I think every agile methodology should have. In this post, I'll be explaining (hopefully) what each of those principles means and why I think it is important. To recap, the six principles for a succesful methodology are -

They are built around small, self-organising teams

The team has a clear vision of what they are doing and where they fit into the bigger picture

The team delivers a regular flow of value via a well defined backlog of work

There is a content authority responsible for making sure decisions are made quickly

There is a clear bidirectional service agreement between the team and the rest of the organisation

There is a fast feedback loop that allows the team and organisation to optimise both the process and the product.